The 7. STOCK
(7th Floor) is an artist run space in Dresden, Germany, organising every
Friday lectures, artist talks, discussions, one evening exhibitions, concerts
and other cultural events. Since 2003 we are trying to prevent a platform
for young artist and other cultural workers in a hostile atmosphere discussing
their work at a long table with food and drinks.

... TROUGH
A WINDOW THAT IS. A group work with Susan Schmidt, Kerstin Zottl
and Stef Burghard was a critical reflexion on institutional and non-institutional
spaces. We tried to make a connection between the non profit student run
space "Schleifmuehlgasse" and the anual exhibition of the Akademie
der Bildenden Kuenste Wien "Schmarotzer".

Taking the windows
and the storefront of the student run space "Schleifmuehlgasse"
mounting some wheels underneath to make it mobile, we drove them through
Vienna to the quite prestigious exhibition "Schmarotzer". So
we had two different situations, on the one hand the storefront leading
to the group exhibition and on the other the "Schleifmuehlgasse"
became even more open lacking the windows.

For a grant (4000
Euros) offered by the Galerie fuer Zeitgenoessische Kunst Leipzig, we
applied with the idea/concept to reanounce the grant in favour of an art
historian. The task for the historian was to reflect on this particular
situation in scientific terms (our decision to transform a grant for artists
into one for art historians) and the personal situation of being both
subject and object the same time.

The Jury accepted
and we built a web site, posted over 1000 e-mails and announced the grant
in different magazines at our own cost. From over 20 serious applicants
we chose Christian Rattemeyer "art historian-in-residence",
who was writing in public in the gallery in July 2001. (Christian Rattemeyer
is currently in house curator at the Artists Space in New York)

This experiment/project
never really ended, because Christian Rattemeyer still has not written
anything besides a short introduction, maybe because of the difficulties
to be the writer and the subject of the writing at the same time.

Being invited to
one of the first group exhibitions in the new space for young art at the
MMK Frankfurt, which is renowned for being influenced by private sponsors,
we also tried to influence the museums purchase policy.During the four
week exhibition we sold items, that we got via sponsorship, to visitors.

Socks, cigarettes,
mixers, books, sex toys, chocolate, electric tools, perfume etc. were
sold to raise money that would be donated to the museum with the stipulation
that they use it to buy one piece of art from our co-exhibitors and add
it to the permanent collection of the museum. There was certainly interest
from the museum in getting the money, but in the end they realised the
idea behind the concept and refused the 2500 Euros.